


Through the Floorboards

by editingatwork



Series: Neighbors AU [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AU, M/M, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 22:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12617428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editingatwork/pseuds/editingatwork
Summary: Swoops' upstairs neighbor is noisy as hell, and Swoops isn't gonna put up with it. Even if the guy is ripped and never wears a shirt.





	Through the Floorboards

**Author's Note:**

> Written in two hours at too-late an hour after half a glass of whiskey, while my cat yowls at me that it's past bedtime. You can probably play bingo with the errors in here. Enjoy?  
> UPDATE: If you're re-reading this and wondering why "Swoops" is now "Jeff," it's because Jeff doesn't play pro hockey in this and doesn't go by a nickname as much as his real name. So, I went back and updated.

It’s 12am and Jeff’s upstairs neighbor his vacuuming his apartment.

Jeff has to be up at 5:30am to get ready for an 8am shareholders meeting and he is  _not in the mood_. Which is why he gets out of bed, pulls on the first pair of pants he can find, and stomps upstairs in his fuzzy red slippers to bang on his neighbor’s door.

Inside, the vacuum shuts off. Ten seconds later, the door opens.

“Do you have  _any idea_  what time it is?” Jeff demands before his tired eyes register what’s in front of him.

The guy at the door—black boxers, bare legs, cut abs and chest, no shirt—scratches his impressive bedhead and replies, “Dunno. Nine-ish?”

“It’s midnight.” The hallway lights are dim and the backlighting from the guy’s apartment isn’t much better. Even so, Jeff can see thick muscles moving under skin as the guy tiredly leans an arm on the door frame and rests his head on it like he’s about to fall asleep right there.

“Shit, really?” The guy yawns and yells back over his shoulder, “You hear that, babe, it’s  _midnight_.”

Fantastic, Jeff thinks, there are two people in this apartment who think it’s fine to be up making noise at this hour. “Yeah, so if you could not vacuum right now, that’d be great.”

The guy yawns again and shrugs. It’s like watching marble move under caramel. “Couldn’t be helped. I’m ‘bout done, though.”

“Great,” Jeff says. He’s still reeling from watching the roll of shoulders, and it’s clashing with his exhaustion and irritation. Generally speaking, he’s not attracted to assholes, so his body’s fizzing response to this situation is a goddamn inconvenience. “Just remember you’re not the only person in this building.”

The guy gives him a thumbs up. Then he backs up two steps and shuts the door, right in Jeff’s face.

Jeff stares at it for a full ten seconds, stupefied, before he huffs and stomps back downstairs. He’d rather spend his time sleeping than arguing.

—

Two nights later, Jeff blinks awake in the dark, flat on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling and blearily wondering  _what the fuck_. A heavy thud echoes overhead, then again, and again—rhythmic. To slow to be a headboard banging against the wall, which rules out sex (thank god).

Instead, it sounds like... oh fucking hell.

Jeff gives it a full two minutes before he troops upstairs to confront his neighbor again.

“Are you  _exercising_?” he demands when the door swings open. The sight that greets him answers his question. The guy is shirtless,  _again_ , only this time he’s wearing tight workout shorts that have hiked up nearly to hips, his hair is slick with sweat, his skin is flushed, and there are wet rivulets painting glistening lines across his gorgeous muscles.

“Yeah,” the guy says, an answer to a question that Jeff has already forgotten asking. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

There is genuine remorse in the guy’s expression, which Jeff would have tried to accept if he wasn’t feeling such a disorienting mix of tired, angry, and horny.

“Just don’t do it again,” he snaps, and marches away before he can say or do something embarrassing.

—

“I don’t actually know what you’re doing,” Jeff says when he confronts Hot Asshole three weeks later. “I just want you to stop.” This is the third time he’s been up here since the exercising incident. Hot Asshole has earned his nickname because he has continued to be noisy at ungodly hours in increasingly creative ways, and he’s been shirtless literally every single time Jeff has come upstairs to confront him about it. Including this time. At least he’s had the decency to put on sweatpants that cover the full lengths of his (ridiculously thick and toned) legs.

Hot Asshole blinks. Jeff realizes that his eyes look a little bloodshot—kind of like he hasn’t been sleeping much, either. Jeff wonders if this is the first time or if he’s missed seeing it before. After all, he only ever sees this guy at night.

“Sorry,” Hot Asshole says gruffly, both his tone and his posture dismissive, like he’s already tired of Jeff on his doorstep. “I’m almost done, anyway.”

“Be done  _now,”_ Jeff snaps. “Or do it in the morning.”

“Christ, fine.” Hot Asshole rubs his eyes. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Jeff repeats, and gets the door shut in his face. Again. “Asshole,” he tells the door, and goes home to get some sleep.

—

Twenty-four hours later, Jeff snaps awake in the dead of night to something upstairs shattering against a wall. It’s loud and sharp, like gunshot, and it leaves him wide-eyed and taking slow breaths to calm his racing heart.

He waits, but the sound doesn’t repeat itself. Just soft footsteps on hardwood and the creak of old sofa springs.

Jeff lies there in the dark, straining to hear. He thinks... he thinks he hears crying. There are no other footsteps, though; no voices, no other sounds. He had assumed, the first time he went up to tell the guy off for vacuuming, that there’d been someone else in the apartment. ‘Babe,’ the guy had said. But Jeff has never seen anyone else there.

Maybe they broke up.

He imagines his gorgeous neighbor crying alone in his living room and swallows hard.

Every other time his neighbor has woken him up at night, he has gotten right out of bed and gone upstairs to tell him off. But now, suddenly, he’s frozen to the mattress, just listening.

He spends so long lying there wallowing in indecision that he falls back asleep.

It feels like seconds later that his alarm goes off. Groaning, he fumbles it off and rolls out of bed. He has been through his morning routine so many times that there’s no hesitation: shower, coffee, clothes, shoes, keys, door.

The click of his own apartment door lock seems to snap him out of his mindless morning stupor. Dumbly, he looks up.

Then he heaves an enormous sigh, because he knows  _exactly_  what he’s about to do and he’s not happy about it.

It takes less than a minute to go upstairs and pound on his neighbor’s door, but it takes three minutes for the door to open.

Hot Asshole comes out looking like shit, and like he’d be madder about the noise if he wasn’t so obviously tired. “D’you have any fuckin’ idea what time it is?” he slurs.

“Six a.m.,” Jeff says, with a perkiness he doesn’t remotely feel. Turnabout is fair goddamn play, even if his neighbor’s red-rimmed eyes and tense frown send a pang of uncomfortable worry through him. Christ, the guy is even wearing a t-shirt. That’s just not right. “Look—”

“Is this about last night?”the guy interrupts. “‘Cause I’m sorry, if I woke you up. I just—” He waves vaguely behind him. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Fuck, his voice even cracks on the apology. Whatever happened last night, he’s not over it, and before Jeff can stop himself, he asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” the guy says, and then on the next breath, “No. It’s my cat.”

Jeff has never had a pet, nor has he ever had a profound connection with an animal in his life. But he has friends with pets and he knows better than to let his failure to empathize show on his face. “Yeah?”

A nod, then a hard swallow. “She’s been in and out of the vet’s all month. Two days ago she went to the animal hospital and they put her in a box with oxygen. Then last night they called me, said she’s having seizures, might not make it through the night.” He smiles briefly, there and gone. “She did.”

“That’s good,” Jeff replies, meanwhile doing some mental math and realizing the noise only started when the cat got sick. Well, shit. Now  _he_ feels like the asshole. “Did they, uh, say when you can bring her home?”

The guy shrugs. “No idea.”

“That blows.”

“Yeah.” Another heartfelt sigh. “Listen, I really am sorry I’ve been an ass all month. Mostly I was just so fucking stressed that I decided I wouldn’t give a shit, but like, that’s not fair. Probably other people in the building are pissed off at me, but nobody’s said anything. You’re the only one. So, thanks for calling me on it.”

Jeff has a tight feeling in his chest that’s either a heart attack or the worst guilt he’s ever felt. “It’s fine, man. I’m sorry about your cat. I hope she gets better. And, uh,” he clears his throat, “sorry I was an ass, too. I could have dealt with it better than just getting in your face all the time.”

The guy laughs. It sounds strained from his exhaustion and stress, but genuine. “You know I started looking forward to it? You wear, like, the weirdest shit to bed, and you have a million pairs of slippers. I’m always wondering what you’re gonna show up in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s fucking hilarious, coming from someone who never puts a shirt on.”

The guy laughs again. “It’s Vegas.”

“It’s distracting,” Jeff says, and colors immediately when the reaction is a single raised eyebrow. “Shut up, you’re fucking ripped. What do you even do for a living?”

“You first.”

Jeff groans and checks his watch. “If I don’t leave right the fuck now, I won’t  _have_  a job. I get off at five, though, and I’ll probably be back by six. You wanna come by, have a beer later? You can tell me about your cat.”

He can’t believe he’s holding his breath waiting for an answer.

The hot neighbor, whose shoulders are straining the fabric of his t-shirt and look  _obscene_  as they move through a shrug, says, “Sure. That sounds... really fucking good. Make it seven, and I’m there.”

“Good.” Jeff checks his watch again. “I really have to go. Take care, man.”

“Yeah, you too. And thanks.”

“No problem.” On impulse, Jeff holds out his hand. “Jeff Troy.”

Hot Neighbor shakes his hand. “Kent Parson.”

When they let go, Jeff says, “You look like shit. Go get some sleep.”

“Fuck off,” Kent says, smiling. He waves as Jeff leaves, only closing the door fully once Jeff has gone back down the stairs.

**Author's Note:**

> join me in the trash heap on [tumblr](http://punmasterkentparson.tumblr.com/).


End file.
